


Fragments

by forgotten_silence



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Psychological Torture, very much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 02:19:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13754208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgotten_silence/pseuds/forgotten_silence
Summary: A dream is the only hope she has. After all, you always wake up from dreams, don’t you? [Spoilers for :re 143 // angsty angst]





	Fragments

It must be a dream.

She is _sure_ it must be a dream- some sort of hallucination her mind had conjured up when she couldn’t handle the inevitability of what was coming. 

Had it already come to pass? 

But she has no wounds to show for it, no blood, not even scars. She feels no pain, no hunger. Her dress is white and clean, like everything in the sparsely furnished room. On the ceiling, a white, tube-light flickers.

Touka sits back down on the bed and waits for the dream to end. 

* * *

In her dream, there is a room without a door. And inside it, she waits.

* * *

A man comes to her, one day, through a door that isn’t there. She is sure she knows him, but she can’t figure out how or from where. The only think she  _does_ know is that her heart is hammering inside her chest, as if in warning, her hands suddenly cold. But this is  _her_ dream, she reminds herself, there is no need to be afraid of a figment of her own imagination. Still, as he strides towards her bed, she can’t help scuttling closer to the wall.

“Kirishima-san,” he greets politely, “How are we doing today?” In his smart black suit, he stands in sharp contrast against the brightness of the room. But it is not his clothes that draw her eyes, but the tiny mole near the corner of his right eye.

Involuntarily, she shivers.

“Would you like to see your husband today, Kirishima-san?” 

Husband? What husband?

Unbidden, an image flashes through her mind- a stump, bleeding, battered,  _broken._ Blood making rivers down black holes where eyes should have been. Screams.

“No,” she hears herself say.

“Ah, that’s a shame,” the man shakes his head, smiling. On any other person’s face, it would have looked rueful- sad, even. But on his face, it just looks mocking. “Fortunately, you’re going to see him anyway.”

“No,” she is shaking, drawing herself fully onto the bed, pressing her back against the white, white wall. “Please, no.”

_This is a dream. A dream. A dream._

Arms pull at her, dragging her off the bed, making her unwilling feet stumble on the cold marble floor. A door opens, and she wonders at how she had missed it. Her room is not door-less after all. 

* * *

She remembers men surrounding them, quinques raised- her army of children half starved, against so many of the CCG’s elite. 

She had known, even then, that they didn’t stand a chance. 

She remembers the screams of the children, the warmth of the blood that rained down, the cut of sharp steel against her ribs and thinking, _No, no, no, no no._

So close, and yet again, cornered and outnumbered. This time, no one had come to save her, no one had told her to run. This time, she was on her own.

She remembers arms hoisting her at some point, being half dragged, half carried. A face peering at her, smiling, a crinkling eye and a tiny black mole right under it. “Would you like to see your husband, Kirishima-san?” he’d asked her, before stepping away with a flourish- a magician pulling off the curtain to reveal his final act.

And there he lay, her Kaneki, and a sob had broken from her throat at the horror of it all; his limbless body lying on the ground like a discarded doll, the blood seeping out of the holes where his arms and legs should have been, the way he writhed to and fro while they _laughed._

They let her fall to her knees next to him, let her kneel over his body, let her touch him, shake him with trembling fingers. “It’s okay,” she told him through her tears, “It’s okay. I’m here.” He stopped mumbling- a mantra she couldn’t discern- and looked at her, and his mouth moved. She thought she heard a whisper of her name.

“Don’t worry, Ken,” the man with the mole said, “We’ll take care of both of them.” Then she was being pulled up and pulled away, her screams mixing with his, as he thrashed violently on the ground.

It was only later that she realized what Kichimura Washuu had said.

 _We’ll take care of both of them_. Both.

* * *

In her dream, he is white and lifeless, a limbless trunk wired to tubes, kept alive for the sole purpose of harvesting him as a weapon. She cries and pleads and  _begs_  them not to, but still they drag her, thrashing and screaming, day after day, week after week, until finally, she has no will left in her to fight.

“Imagine this,” Kichimura Washuu says in a delighted whisper, “His own child using a quinque made of his Kagune against  _you_. How beautifully tragic would that be?” His laugh echoes in the hallway, and Touka stares, unblinking, at the body on the other side of the glass, having already spent her tears weeks ago,

 _A dream,_  she tells herself.  _A dream can’t hurt you._

As if in answer, her stomach flutters.

* * *

Sometimes, Touka dreams of better things. 

Sometimes, she is in :re,  the sun’s rays casting the cafe’ into the orange hue of dusk, her hands around a cup that is warm and filled to the brim with coffee she can almost smell. 

Sometimes, it is just him sitting with her, his mouth turned up in that shy smile. 

Sometimes, it is all of them- Nishiki with his outrageous mop of fiery red hair, Hinami, in soft, floral dresses she’d worn as a child, Yomo, smiling at her warmly over his own cup of coffee, Ayato, tugging at her dress and standing on tip-toes, still too small, too short, to see over the counter.

In these dreams, everything is vibrant and real and filled with colour, and nothing is white.

* * *

In her dream there is a room with a door she cannot open, and inside it, she waits.

* * *

They bring her food every now and then, although she can’t keep track of when or how frequently. She eats, not because she must, but because if she doesn’t, her nightmares will hold her down and force it down her throat. 

It is better, she has discovered, to simply do as she is told. It is better to eat when she is offered food, better to let them prod her for a bit every now and then instead of fight their needles, better to recede into the deepest corners of her mind, to her dreams within the dream- those of sunlight streaming in through open windows and old friends and warm colours, when they force her to stand witness to the worst of it.

* * *

Touka wonders if she is ever going to wake up.

* * *

Even in her dream, she can feel the life thriving inside of her. Soon she is all stomach and bones, her hands skinny and thin, her knees knobby. She feels heavy, like a balloon filled with water and close to bursting. 

When she presses her hand to her stomach, she can feel the movement beneath her hands. 

 _Just a dream_ ,she tells herself, _just part of the dream._

But nevertheless, she finds herself unable to quell the sliver of fear that has started up inside of her, a fear that grows every day, until she is sure it will swallow her up whole. Still, she refuses to let herself think the unthinkable, because she must not betray herself, must not give up the last shred of hope she has.

 _This is a dream,_  she tells herself firmly.  _This can only be a dream._

* * *

A dream is the only hope she has. After all, you always wake up from dreams, don’t you?

* * *

A ghost comes to see her one day, floats in through the locked door and kneels by her bed. When she clasps Touka’s hands in hers though, it is solid.

“Do you remember me?” she asks.

She does, from a time that seems so faraway that it, too, must have been a dream. She remembers the pale blue hair, the laughing face that looks sallower, thinner. She remembers her and the others, and  _him,_  and the sunlit days at :re.

“I’m Saiko,” the ghost says softly, “I was on sensei’s team.”

Touka nods.

“I’m so sorry,” there are tears in the ghost’s eyes, although Touka isn’t sure why she would be crying.

“It’s just a dream,” she says gently, squeezing her hand.

“Y-yes,” the ghost sniffs, “Just a- a dream.” It seems to take a great deal of effort, but finally, the ghost gives her a shaky smile. “Kirishima-san,” she says, “Do you have any names you’d like? You know, for the baby?”

A name, yes. She’d thought about names before, hadn’t she? Before she’d started having this nightmare? She’d even made a list.

“I’ve always liked Hikari,” she finds herself saying.

* * *

They don’t take her away at first, of course they don’t. Instead, they bundle her up in a blanket and place her in her arms. She is tiny and red and wrinkly, but she is the most beautiful thing Touka had ever seen. 

For a moment, she forgets that this is her nightmare. For a moment, she just holds her and stares in wonder. 

Then, one day, she wakes up to find herself alone in her white room.

* * *

They starve her after that, and Touka discovers you _can_  feel hungry in dreams. They torture her, just for the fun of it, torment her with everyone she loves, but never enough to kill her. That, they tell her, is reserved for the child who is growing up as lovely as a flower. 

“Poetic justice,” Kichimura Washuu shrugs, “I’ve always been an artist.”

* * *

In the dreams within her dreams, she holds her daughter in her arms. Tiny, chubby arms reach for her, and there are toothless smiles and blue eyes that reflect her own. 

In the dreams, Kaneki has all his limbs. In her dreams, he plays catch with their daughter as she learns to waddle on unsure feet. They sit together for coffee, and he teaches her how to read. In her dreams, there is grey in their hair that comes only with age, and Hikari grows into a confident young woman under their care.

In the dreams within her dreams, there are no doves, no blood, no death.

* * *

One day, Touka dreams that her daughter came back.

It takes her breath away when the light strikes her face, and even though a lot of time must have passed, she _knows._ She would know those eyes anywhere, she thinks.

 _How can a child grow up so fast?_ she wonders dumbly, as hostile eyes regard her. _Hadn’t she held her in her arms just yesterday?_

Her feet take her forward, and as if in a trance, she reaches towards the face that look so much like hers, so much like Kaneki’s. 

“Don’t try your tricks on me, Kirishima,” her daughter’s voice is hard, and suddenly, she finds herself staring up at a metal rod. A  _quinque._

Touka watches as the quinque unfurls into a kagune she knows only too well. 

She feels sick.

“I’ve come to claim my rights,” her daughter says proudly, “You are to be my first kill.”

“Hikari,” she says, blinking away tears she didn’t know she still had. 

 _“_ Don’t speak my name,” Hikari snarls, “You won’t get to me with your acting.” But she pauses, quinque still in hand.

 _I love you_ , Touka wants to say,  _I love you so much, Hikari. I’m your mother. Please don’t do this. Please, not like this._ But she swallows the words.

 Kichimura had done a good job of setting up the pieces, and there was nothing she could say or do that would change it in their favour. Right now, right here, Hikari was safe, and if she said anything, it might change that, so she wouldn’t. The best she could hope for was that Hikari would never know the truth.

Touka draws in a breathe and composes herself.  _Just a dream,_ she tells herself for the last time.

“Go on, then,” she tells Hikari, “show me what you are made of.”

Hikari hesitates for a moment, as if unsure of what to do. Then the RInkaku comes crashing towards Touka.

* * *

This time, Touka does not dream.


End file.
